More on digital editions etc on OhMyNews

Will787, the main contributor to the Guardian talkboard discussion on digital editions, has a followup to his earlier piece (see below) about digital editions in the UK. Again he's nice about us: "The Guardian's 'digital edition' is effective value". He also cites us as a working (at least in broadband) example of Adobe's vaunted "network publishing". Will787 comments that print media seems to be rather quiet about digital media.
(From OhmyNews)

Explanation for the new template

Technical shortcomings on my part. I messed up the comments feature and ended up in so much trouble it was easier to adopt a pro forma Blogger jobbie.
Having done that I see that the archive cell is appearing in the wrong place, so this new template has its own problems. Ho hum.

Digital edition success? Depends on what you mean

Good comment by Vin Crosbie in response to CyberJournalist concluding that recent circulation figures for "digital editions" prove them "destined to failure". Crosbie says that yes, retailed downloadable digital editions will fail - but only until the technology at the consumer end brings the medium to life. Meanwhile newspaper digital edition websites (such as ours) fare slightly better, and digital editions of B2B magazines can indeed be highly successful. Furthermore, print "digital editions" using vendors such as NewspapersDirect have been a useful and profitable addition to the roster.
(From Digital Deliverance)

Seybold report on editorial planning

Or what they call budgeting in the US. Haven't read it yet, apart from a bit about the CCI NewsGate install at the Tampa Tribune.
(From Seybold Reports

Correct your magazine article - in the digital edition

PC Mag sent out a digital edition containing a correction to a story that appeared in the original. So should a diged present itself as being of the electronic media ilk (i.e. ever-live) or should it be a true repesentation of the printed product? I prefer the "see the correction" model I think.
(From E-Media Tidbits)

QuarkXPress 7.0 will be "InDesign-like"

According to AppleInsider's sources, QuarkXPress version 7 -- currently touted for release in early 2005 -- will feature "a 'very InDesign-like interface' and a completely rewritten PDF engine".
(From AppleInsider)

We're a niche publisher

Columnist weblogs announced. Computer games goes live Monday.
(From NMA To Go)

Safe from Harm

An "I was looking back to see if you were looking back at me..." moment, with, following the Guardian's recent OhMyNews extravaganza, an article in OhMyNews about the Guardian (albeit from an Enlgish writer). Sometimes cutting. A quote: "So far as I know [Peter Preston's recent epiphanic web article in the Obs] is the first statement on paper in the Guardian or Observer that informs a reader about the digital editions."
(From OhmyNews International)

Twelve sources account for majority of stories on Google News

Despite evidence to the contrrary (albeit now a year old) from my Googlescraper, research by Digital Deliverance shows no Guardian Unlimited in the top ten sources on Google News. Darn! Their table shows (with statistical rounding):
Reuters    175 stories    18% of all
New York Times    80 stories    8% of all
Voice of America    67 stories    7% of all
Xinhua    67 stories    7% of all
Bloomberg    61 stories    6% of all
Washington Post    61 stories    6% of all
ABC News    49 stories    5% of all
Boston Globe    26 stories    2% of all
CNN    22 stories    2% of all
San Francisco Chronicle    17 stories    1% of all
CNN International    17 stories    1% of all
Christian Science Monitor    15 stories    1% of all
Toronto Star    13 stories    1% of all
Seattle Post Intelligencer    13 stories    1% of all
United Press International    12 stories    1% of all
USA Today    10 stories    1% of all
Houston Chronicle    10 stories    1% of all
FOX News    10 stories    1% of all
Newsday    10 stories    1% of all
The Globe and Mail    9 stories    0% of all.
Read Vin's article and associated comments for more on this.
(From Digital Deliverance)

25% service during DoubleClick attack

The hack attack launched on Tuesday against ad provider DoubleClick -- and the knock-on effect for its 900 customers -- left many of the world's most popular websites delivering content "less than 25 per cent of the time", according to monitoring company Keynote Systems. Targeting DoubleClick proved a clever way of subverting the touted strength-through-decentralisation of the internet.
Washington Post

Have you tried Newsbot?

They really need to sort out their stylesheets. What's with the paddingless picture wrap? Amusingly, the site works much better in Safari and Moz than in Internet Explorer on a Mac.

Format change calls for rate card based on impact, not ccms [reg req]

Summary of panel discussions at Nexpo from Editor & Publisher. Stig Nordqvist of the Swedish Newspaper Publishers' Association described circulation boosts at two recent tabloid switchers, and noted that an expected short-term drop in advertising revenue didn't happen. "A good tab, he concluded, sells ad impact, not millimeters." Elsewhere Allan Marshall argued that Metro, rather than cannibalising Mail readers, actually gets people into the newspaper reading habit, whereupon they progress "to a more serious read", namely the Mail on Sunday. Discussions also covered e-paper, digital editions, RFIDs and mobile communications (especially Blackberries).
(From Editor & Publisher)

New hardware kills old software at Chicago Tribune

There but ...
(From Editor & Publisher)

Popular news sites don't update that often

In a survey published in OJR of 30 newspaper websites in the US, only 12 were found to make regular updates (ranging from 60 to 200 per day) to their home pages. Five made virtually no changes and the remaining 13 only added breaking stories. Illustrates how many newspaper websites are still basically regurgitators of their print content and follow the same cycles. Article summarised in E-Media Tidbits, plus a little bit of controversy over what constitutes the home page of a newspaper website.
(From E-Media Tidbits)

Digital Edition circulation figures, USA

Some stats from Digital Magazine for digital editions in September 2003:
New York Times 3,172
Washington Post 424
USA Today 900
(From AOP UK)